QandO

June 10, 2004

Let Reagan be Reagan
Posted by Dale Franks

The Washington Post's Jim Hoagland seems a bit miffed that the coverage of Ronald Reagan's presidency is so elegiac. What, he wonders, about the warts? For instance:

To one who covered many of the key international events of that day, Reagan seemed in fact to come late to a realistic view of the Soviet Union and the world, and -- like most presidents -- to have improvised furiously and not always successfully in foreign affairs.

I'm not even sure what that means. Reagan came late to a realistic view of the USSR? Reagan, in the early 80s, in his speeches at Notre Dame, the British Parliament, and many other places, repeated constantly that the USSR was entering a crisis and that its last page of history was already being written, as improbable as that sounded in 1982. If anyone came late to a soberingly realistic view of how the world worked, it was the Politburo, who, when they began to perceive that the world was beginning to close in around them, chose Gorbachev, rather than another crusty, hidebound Brezhnev protégé.

Reagan publicly called the USSR an evil empire. That is, in my estimation, about the most realistic assessment any American politician made about the USSR in the 45 years of Cold War.

It is also easy in today's elegiac mood to forget how unpopular Reagan was abroad for most of his presidency, even among his peers. France's Francois Mitterrand once sputtered in rage at me when I asked about his ideological conflicts with Reagan over Soviet policies. Kremlin officials expressed private delight at Reagan's election because they would be able to "roll him."

Ah, more examples of the Europeans' amazingly sophisticated and "realistic" view of the world, no doubt.

By the way, Comrades, a quick question: How's that "rolling Reagan" strategy working out for you? Hello? Hello? Huh. Doesn't seem like anyone's home. Odd.

He was more right about the evil and the fate of Soviet imperialism than Mitterrand, Gorbachev and most other leaders of the day. He was far from the amiable dunce portrayed by his knee-jerk critics.

But the opposition that Reagan stirred should not be airbrushed out of the final photograph of his times.

Let me see if I get this right. Hoagland is saying that Reagan was right about the USSR, and Mitterrand was wrong. But we shouldn't forget that Mitterrand criticized Reagan.

Uh...OK. Why not? If Mitterrand was indeed wrong--and the fact that I can't find any new maps with a big "USSR" painted on them kinda indicates that he was--then who gives a fig about his criticisms? He was wrong! His criticisms, therefore, were foolish and shortsighted. Since his criticisms were foolish, there is no reason whatsoever to attach any importance to them at all. Quod erat demonstratum.

Nor can we ignore the fact that the analysis and policies that brought some breakthroughs with Moscow originated more with George Shultz at the State Department than at Reagan's White House.

Yes, I'm sure it was quite a shock to the Reagan White House to learn that George Schultz, the Secretary of State chosen by Mr. Reagan, was formulating policies about foreign affairs. Why, he even had ambassadors stationed in Moscow itself! Shocking!

Just out of curiosity, what member of the Reagan Administration approved these policies once Schultz thought of them? Hmm. Let me see...

The Wall collapsed a year after Reagan's successor had been chosen and had started to alter policies toward Moscow. That collapse was due more to the struggle in the 1980s of the citizens of Poland, Hungary, East Germany and other satellite nations than to new actions by Washington.

How odd it is, then, to hear former Soviet and Eastern Bloc dissidents recalling that it was Mr. Reagan's willingness to stand up to the Soviets and call them an "evil empire", and work ceaselessly to frustrate their designs, that gave the dissidents hope and courage to carry on.

They could fight that struggle because there was a president in the White House who did not see his job, as Mr. Carter did, as one of managing America's decline. Instead, Mr. Reagan saw his job as opposing and defeating soviet totalitarianism. I fancy that had some minor effect on the dissident struggle behind the Iron Curtain. And, it seems the dissidents themselves think so.

There were important costs that came with Reagan's undeniable successes. His confrontational style used in getting much-needed Pershing 2 missiles deployed in Europe helped prematurely end the career of West Germany's highly competent chancellor, Helmut Schmidt.

Well, yes, it did, in that it led to the election of a new Chancellor, Helmut Kohl, who unreservedly desired to have the Pershings and GLCMs deployed to Germany, and who remained as Chancellor for a decade, ultimately overseeing the reunification of East and West Germany, which, by the way, seems to have had some connection with that Soviet collapse business.

The competent Helmut Schmidt and his realpolitik towards the east was part of the problem, not part of the solution. The whole basis of realpolitik was an assumption that the split between east and west was permanent and unchangeable, and that by playing nice with the Sovs, he could get them to be nice back.

That was the type of thinking that led to the constant retreat in world affairs that America suffered in the 1970s. So, if Reagan did cost Schmidt his job--at the behest, one must remember, of the German people's democratic choice in selecting an conservative CDU politician with diametrically opposed views--then, good riddance.

U.S. support extended to guerrillas to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan has blown back in the form of al Qaeda and extreme instability in Central Asia.

And yet, oddly, al-Qaida is the creation of a citizen of our Saudi Arabian ally. In any event, let's grant, arguendo, that this is true. What should Mr. Reagan have done? Simply allow the Sovs to occupy Afghanistan forever? And, why does he bear responsibility for what happened in Afghanistan, or the middle east in general, after he left office? As best as I can remember, we had two presidents from two different parties, and a span of 12 years in which to clean up the mess left by power vacuum the Soviet collapse left.

Is it Reagan's fault that neither Bush nor Clinton prevented the rise of al-Qaida, or defeated the Taliban? What, precisely does Hoagland suggest should've been done? And how could Reagan have done it, since both the Taliban and Al-Qaida were created during the Presidency of George W. Bush?

If only the Soviets were still around. The world such a stable place under their beneficent influence.

U.S. help to Saddam Hussein in Iraq also boomeranged.

Well, yes it did. Let's see, we had a war between the religious totalitarians of Iran, a nation that was supporting terrorist groups like Hezbollah--and still is, by the way--and had held 53 American diplomatic personnel captive for 444 days, and Iraq, a secular totalitarian state that up to that time, hadn't threatened us at all.

As one of George Schultz's State Department spokesmen said at the time, "Our only regret is that both sides can't lose." So, we picked the side that at the time, was no threat to us, and was opposed to a terrorist-supporting state that was.

Oh, and let's not forget that the Soviets were standing by, looking lustfully at the possibility of intervening a little themselves, and gaining a year-round warm water port, thereby. Take a look at the old video clips of the Iran-Iraq war. The Iraqis aren't using M16s. They're all armed with AK-47s, PKMs, and RPGs. Saddam Hussein wasn't Reagan's good buddy. But Reagan knew it was in the best interests of the United States to be just supportive enough to ensure that Yuri Andropov didn't become Saddam's best buddy either.

Unfortunately, Ronald Reagan's amazing psychic powers failed him, and he failed to see the threat Saddam Hussein would become two years after Reagan left office.

You will note, however, that as soon as the Sovs were no longer a factor, we lost little time in doing a fair bit of Saddam-whacking ourselves.

But if we airbrush and prettify history for the small screen and the front page, and ultimately for the books to come, we will not learn the most important lessons about mistakes that can be avoided. Let Reagan be Reagan, warts and all, for all time now.

Look, last night on CNN, The Nation's David Corn was on, and he made some comment to the effect that we can't forget that »ketchup is a vegetable« is also a legacy of the Reagan Administration. Uh, well, unless the Federal Government is still ruling that way, no, Dave, it isn't.

No one claims Reagan's presidency was perfect. No president spends 4 or 8 years in the White House without making mistakes, sometimes god-awful ones. But the fact is that Ronald Reagan's presidency changed the nation and changed the world.

In 1981, hardly anyone besides Ronald Reagan was claiming that the USSR was on its last legs. Hardly anyone was claiming that America's best days were still ahead of her. For cripes sake, we'd just had to sit in our living rooms and listen to Jimmy Carter scold us for being weak little girly-men in his "malaise" speech. Hell, prior to Reagan, Republican presidents were imposing wage and price controls. Ten years later, Bill Clinton, a Democrat, was assuring us that the era of big government was over.

OK, Clinton wasn't actually being totally honest with us on that one, but still, that's a huge sea change in American politics.

Most of you don't know what it was like to stare out over the steel mesh walls, mine fields, and kill zones that divided East and West Germany, watching through binoculars at the Soviets or East German VoPos who were using their binoculars to watch you. Most of you haven't listened to the sound of motors start up on the other side of that barrier, and wonder if you were hearing the first signs that the 7th Guards Motorized Rifle Division was about to come straight at you.

Well, I have. And I'll bet McQ has, as well.

And I also stood and watched, barely 3 years later, as East and West Berliners tore through those walls, and reached through the breaks in the barrier to shake each others' hands.

Whatever the "warts", mistakes, or failures of the Reagan Administration, they pale to insignificance beside the accomplishments that changed the history of our nation, and the history of the entire world, for generations to come.

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